Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) *

Transcription

1 Published in Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman and Christine Korsgaard, Eds., Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), available through Adrian M. S. Piper Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) * In 1951 John Rawls expressed these convictions about the fundamental issues in metaethics: [T]he objectivity or the subjectivity of moral knowledge turns, not on the question whether ideal value entities exist or whether moral judgments are caused by emotions or whether there is a variety of moral codes the world over, but simply on the question: does there exist a reasonable method for validating and invalidating given or proposed moral rules and those decisions made on the basis of them? For to say of scientific knowledge that it is objective is to say that the propositions expressed therein may be evidenced to be true by a reasonable and reliable method, that is, by the rules and procedures of what we may call "inductive logic"; and, similarly, to establish the objectivity of moral rules, and the decisions based upon them, we must exhibit the decision procedure, which can be shown to be both reasonable and reliable, at least in some cases, for deciding between moral rules and lines of conduct consequent to them. 1 In this passage Rawls reconfigured the issue of moral objectivity and so reoriented the practice of metaethics from linguistic analysis to rational methodology. In so doing, his work has provided inspiration to philosophers as disparate in normative views as Thomas Nagel, 2 Richard Brandt 3, Alan Gewirth 4, and David Gauthier. 5 Rawls replaced the Moorean question, Do moral terms refer? with the Rawlsian question, Can moral judgments be the outcome of a rational and reliable procedure? He later gave a resoundingly positive answer to this question 6 and later still, a more tentative one. 7 Rawls' considered qualification of his earlier enthusiasm about the extent to which moral philosophy could be "part of the theory of rational choice" 8 is a tribute to the seriousness with which he took his critics' objections. * APRA Foundation Berlin

2 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 2 The above passage, and the article from which it is excerpted, make clear that Rawls took his original inspiration from a carefully worked out analogy with inductive logic in scientific procedure. But a fellow traveler among rational methodologists in metaethics namely Kant risked defending an even closer and more controversial relationship between scientific and moral objectivity. I shall argue that Kant's thesis that the moral law is objectively necessary 9 relies on the same type and degree of objectivity he earlier claimed for scientific knowledge. Thus Rawls' youthful impatience with "speculative" metaethics, and the boldness of his claiming for ethics the same sort of procedural rigor to be found in the natural sciences, puts him in the best possible philosophical company: of those whose ambitions for moral philosophy and the philosophical powers by which they serve it are greatest. In the Groundwork Kant characterizes the moral law as an objective principle that compels imperfectly rational human beings with objective necessity (Ak ). Kant establishes the metaethical foundations and technical terminology for his conception of moral objectivity in the Analytic and Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. 10 Although many of Kant's views undergo revision or development from the first Critique to the Groundwork to the second Critique, 11 we will see that the conceptual foundations Kant establishes early on for addressing the issue of moral objectivity remain firmly in place. I. Understanding A. Synthesis A representation, for Kant, is any mental content. Representations can be either intuitional or nonintuitional. Intuitional representations "get directly to" 12 an object that is given to us in sensibility (A 19/B 34). An intuitional representation organizes the data of sense in space and time, which Kant calls the forms of intuition. So only intuitional representations are directly of given objects. All nonintuitional representations are themselves of representations rather than directly of objects (A 68/B 93). Since intuitional representations are by definition of objects and not of other representations, and since empirical objects are themselves representations, the objects intuitional representations represent cannot be, in turn, empirical objects. Rather, they are objects in themselves apart from their representations. 13 A concept "orders various representations under one common representation" (A 68/B 93). We do this spontaneously in that this mental act is not a reaction to some

3 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 3 external cause, as sensation is (A 50/B 74, passim). Conceptualizing representations is something we initiate rather than something that is imposed upon us. This, Kant thinks, is what it means to be an intelligence (B 158, n.). And to conceive ourselves in this way as active, spontaneously reasoning and thinking agents is to conceive ourselves as persons. 14 The representations we conceptualize can be either intuitional or nonintuitional. They have in common what is expressed by the representation that subsumes them. The common representation is the concept that unifies the various representations under it. A concept, then, is a rule of selection for collecting mental contents similar in a certain respect under the rubric of that concept; or, as Kant also puts it, a function (A 79/B 105). "Since," Kant tells us, "no representation other than intuition gets directly to the object, a concept is never in unmediated relation to an object, but rather to some other representation of it (be it an intuition, or itself a concept)" (A 68/B 93). Concepts, therefore, mediate and qualify our relation to externally given objects. Synthesis is Kant's technical term for the process by which different, specifically intuitional representations are collected under one concept. Synthesis is collection when applied specifically to intuitional representations. It is, Kant tells us, "the act of adding different representations together, and of grasping their manifoldness in one cognition" (A 77/B 103). Synthesis supplies order and continuity to our moment-tomoment sense experience (A ). It also unites intuitional representations into a particular, identifiable content (A 78/B 103). This content is what the concept that unites them expresses. So intuitional representations are synthesized according to a particular rule of selection, and this rule can be inferred from the content of the concept under which they are subsumed. What determines the content of that rule of selection? That is, what determines which similarities among intuitional representations are relevant to their synthetic grouping under concepts? Kant uses the term "synthesis" specifically in connection with intuitional representations, and intuitional representations are direct and unmediated representations of externally given objects in themselves. So it would be tempting to think that the similarities represented were similarly given by those objects; and therefore that the basis for our grouping of representations was to be traced to attributes of those objects themselves. But Kant thinks that the similarities most salient to us, and therefore the best candidates for conceptual synthesis, are those which most

4 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 4 closely conform to the innate conceptual preconceptions we bring to the act of cognitive discrimination. The concepts that select and group intuitional representations are what Kant calls the pure transcendental concepts of the understanding, or categories. These include substance and attribute, and cause and effect. These pairs are not analytic, i.e. conjoined by definition as are the concepts of a bachelor and an unmarried man. Rather, they are conjoined in the spatiotemporal form of our intuitional representations. And since, according to Kant, they are innate, logically necessary 15 and universal concepts, they are cognitive preconditions for experiencing something as a coherent and unified object at all. B. Judgment Kant thinks that "the understanding can make no other use of these concepts other than to judge by means of them" (A 68/B 93). A judgment more specifically, a categorical judgment that ascribes predicate to subject does exactly what concepts do, only at a more abstract level: it collects relevantly similar representations that are already subsumed under a less abstract concept under a more abstract concept (A 79/B 105). A synthetic a priori judgment, then, is an innate, logically necessary and universal judgment that collects intuitional representations under the pure concepts of the understanding listed in the Table of Categories (A 80/B 106). Kant tells us that by abstracting from the content of any such judgment and "attending only to the mere form of [our] understanding" (A 70/B 95), we can cull the formal rules of selection among representations. These are the logical forms of judgment set out by Kant in their entirety in the Table of Judgment (A 70/ B 95). So whereas the categories of the understanding listed in the Table of Categories combine the innate, logically necessary and universal rules for collecting representations with specifically intuitional representations, the logical forms of judgment listed in the Table of Judgments abstract from both intuitional and nonintuitional representations. Subtract representations themselves from the conceptual rules for collecting them and you get the logical forms of those rules. Among the representations subsumed by a judgment under any concept, whether transcendental or empirical, there will be at least one which is intuitional, i.e. in

5 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 5 direct relation to a given object."[a]ll judgments," Kant says, "are functions of unity among our representations, since instead of an unmediated representation, a higher one, which comprises this and more, are used in knowing the object, and thereby many possible cognitions are gathered into one" (A 69/B 94). Thus the underlying structure of the categorical judgment, "All bodies are divisible," might look something like this: r5 : divisibility } mediated relation to object r4 : body, area, real number, etc. } mediated relation to object r3 : sentient creature, table, rock, etc. } mediated relation to object r2 : Transcendental Object = X 16 }(= fits categories of substance/attributes, cause/effect) } mediated relation to object r1 : intuitions: (= appearances) } unmediated relation to object thing in itself =??? (= [noumenal] object[s]) In this judgment, relevantly similar intuitional representations of (a) given noumenal object(s) r1 are synthesized under the transcendental concept of an object r2, to which certain categories apply, such as substance/accident and cause/effect. These situate the appearance of the object in space and time. They also define what it is for something to be an object of our experience. We must represent it as a discrete substance with attributes. We must also represent it as both having and being susceptible to causal force. Once we become aware of something as satisfying the cognitive criteria for being an object, we are in the realm of empirical objects of experience. Here we next try to ascertain what kind of object it is. We collect observational representations under higher-level empirical attributes. Representations of the relevantly similar empirical attributes of that object are in turn collected under a more abstract empirical concept r3, that of a sentient creature; that representation, in turn, along with representations of other relevantly similar three-dimensional entities under a yet more abstract concept r4, that of a body; and that representation, finally,

6 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 6 along with representations of other similarly individuated but non-three dimensional entities under the even more abstract concept r5, divisibility. So on the one hand, all higher concepts or representations implicitly embed externally given objects in the judgments we make, no matter how tenuous or distanced our conceptual connection to those objects. On the other, any nonintuitional representation distances us from the object to some extent, including the representations "I", "I think," or "is my experience." All of our experience is theoryladen in this way. This is what Kant means when he says that "[j]udgment is... the mediate knowledge of an object, that is, the representation of a representation of it" (A 68/B 93). Any cognition that I can recognize and represent as mine is thereby distanced from sensibility and mediated by that judgment itself. On Kant's view, being "detached" from my "feelings" is the necessary price of unifed selfhood. C. Categorical Indicatives The two logical forms of judgment of interest for this discussion are the first two under "III. Relation," in the Table of Judgments of the first Critique, the categorical and the hypothetical. Relational judgments generally connect a priori concepts that have already synthesized intuitional representations. Categorical judgments more specifically, categorical indicative judgments have the form, "All (or some) A is B." Categorical indicatives relate the predicate concept to the subject concept by way of the representations subsumed under each. An example would be the judgment, "The human soul is immortal." A second example would be "All bodies are divisible." Both examples relate predicate to subject, but only the second relates attributes to substances because the first is true by definition of the concept of a soul, whereas the second connects intuitional (as well as nonintuitional) representations of objects. Hypothetical judgments have the form, "If P then Q." Hypothetical judgments relate two categorical indicative judgments as antecedent (or, to use Kant's technical term, ground) to consequent. For example, the hypothetical judgment, "If there is a perfect justice, the obstinately wicked are punished," relates the two categorical indicatives, "There is a perfect justice," and "The obstinately wicked are punished" (A 73/B 98). Another example of a hypothetical judgment would be, "If one answers the telephone, it ceases ringing." This one relates the two categorical indicatives, "One

7 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 7 answers the telephone," 17 and "The telephone ceases ringing." Both examples relate antecedent to consequent, but only the second relates cause to effect, and again the reason is the same. The first is true by definition of the concept of perfect justice, whereas the second connects intuitional representations of objects. At B 141 fn. and A 73/B 98 - A74/B 99 Kant inveighs against the reduction of hypothetical and disjunctive judgment forms to the categorical. 18 Nevertheless he is wrong. Disjunctive judgments can be translated into hypothetical ones, and any hypothetical judgment can be replaced by a categorical one that ascribes to the subject a complex property, such as that of being an antecedent to the consequent or a cause of the effect. For example, the above two hypothetical judgments can instead be rendered as "Perfect justice requires punishing the wicked," and "Answering the telephone stops its ringing." By reducing the number of judgment forms Kant claims to be transcendentally necessary to the categorical and extending its scope to cover antecedental and causal predicates, Kant's argument for the objectivity of empirical knowledge is strengthened, not weakened as he seems to think. The reason is that categorical indicatives have a special status in Kant's theory; and in the B Deduction Kant explains what it is: [A categorical indicative] judgment is nothing other than the way to bring given cognitions to the objective unity of apperception. This is what the relational term "is" aims at: to distinguish the objective unity of given representations from the subjective. It denotes their relation to original apperception, and its necessary unity, even if the judgment itself is empirical, and therefore contingent, as for example, in the judgment, "Bodies are heavy." I.. here assert that these representations... belong to one another in virtue of the necessary unity of apperception in the synthesis of intuitions... Only thus does there arise from this relation a judgment, that is, a relation which is objectively valid, and so can be adequately distinguished from a relation of the same representations that would have only subjective validity, for example according to laws of association. In the latter case, I would only be able to say, "When I carry a body, I feel an impression of weight"; but not, "It, the body, is heavy;" which is as much as to say that these two representations are bound together in the object, i.e. without regard to the state of the subject, and not merely in perception (as often as that perception may be repeated) (B 142).

8 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 8 Kant's point is that the relational term that connects predicate with subject in a categorical indicative judgment and it is a point that would apply as well to "has the attribute of" as it does to "is" objectifies that connection as being in the object rather than in the subject. To recognize the connection of representations as being in the object is to recognize the representations that constitute that object as epistemically distinct from those that constitute the subject. Now the logical function of judgment, Kant tells us, is to collect all such representations, whether intuitional or conceptual, in one consciousness, or apperception; that is, to finally subsume all of them under the concept "I think" (B 143). This means that necessarily, I must be able to conceive of any such representation, concept or judgment, no matter how abstract or removed from sensibility, as mine in order for it to be part of my consciousness. But the representations that collectively comprise the representation of a unified object presuppose a unified conscious subject the transcendental unity of apperception in which those representations are ordered and collected according to innate, logically necessary, and universal concepts. Therefore, a categorical indicative asserts a connection among representations that is as objective as anything can be for us. Kant s doctrine of transcendental idealism clearly rejects any concept of empirical objectivity as consisting in the ontological independence of the object. And the Analogies demonstrate Kant s attempts to ground the objectivity of objects and causally related events in an analysis of temporally sequential representations. Objectivity, for Kant, is objectivity of knowledge, not the ontological independence of the object from the knowing subject. On Kant's view, objectivity just is the conceptual a priority, logical necessity, and universality of judgment about the object. 19 Even if we concede Kant his insistence on the essential difference between categorical, hypothetical and disjunctive judgments, however, hypothetical and disjunctive judgments both still embed categorical indicatives that implicitly assert objective relations between subject and predicate. Therefore, all such relational judgments implicitly presuppose the objectivity of these relations. Whether the telephone ceases ringing because I answer it or not may be open to question; that I answer it, and that it ceases ringing, is not. But all such empirical hypothetical judgments presuppose the transcendental forms of judgment that unify a priori intuitional representations. Kant describes all of

9 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 9 the synthetic a priori judgments that comprise the Table of Categories as universal rules of unity in the synthesis of appearances that have objective reality as necessary conditions of experience (A 157/B 196). What he means is that the relational judgment forms (inter alia) we find in the Table of Judgments, when applied to the synthesis of intuitional representations, further objectify those representations by linking them in the form of discriminable events and entities. These empirical events and entities are, from the point of view of my experience, fully objective and veridical. A fortiori, the hypothetical judgment form synthesizes intuitional representations already objectified by their categorical indicative form into a causal relation that, from the point of view of experience, objectifies them even further. 20 II. Reason A. Ideas In the Analytic of the first Critique, Kant has tried to show that the logical forms of relational judgment listed in the Table of Judgments, when combined with intuitional representations, yield objective knowledge. In the Dialectic he tries to show that these same three logical functions, when extended beyond intuitional representations, yield increasingly abstract, comprehensive concepts and theories that encompass all lowerlevel representations; and finally yield transcendent and transcendental ideas of reason. Kant defines an idea or concept of reason as "a concept formed from [pure concepts of the understanding] that transcends the possibility of experience" (A 320/B 377). Ideas are highly abstract concepts that unify less abstract concepts of a certain kind under a single, comprehensive concept. An idea can be a theoretical entity (such as a perfectly rational being or a quark), a theoretical law (such as that of freedom or relativity) or a concept strictly speaking (such as immortality or the unified field). Ideas deal only indirectly with experience (B 359), since "an object that would be adequate to the transcendental idea can never be found within experience" (A 327/B 384). However, these most sweepingly universal concepts do not abstract from intuitional representations, but instead embed them in more abstract and general judgments. Thus when Kant characterizes reason as the faculty of principles, and knowledge from principles as "that knowledge in which I cognize the particular in the universal through concepts" (A 299/B 356-A 300/B 357), he is making the same point about the theory-ladenness of experience he made at A 68/B 93-A 69/B 94 discussed in

10 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 10 Section I.B, but at a higher level of abstraction. Reason, he says, is the faculty of judging mediately (A 330/B 386). There are many ideas of reason. 21 But Kant claims that the three most abstract, comprehensive and universal ones are engendered by the three relational judgment forms themselves. We have seen in Section I.A that when these judgment forms apply to to the intuitional data of sense they yield the categories. But when their scope of application is extended sufficiently far beyond the data of sense they yield the higherlevel concepts Kant calls ideas (A 323/B 380). First, there is the idea of immortality, which he argues is engendered by universalizing the categorical judgment form: The search for completeness and comprehensiveness of predication yields the concept of a subject which is never a predicate. Since ideas of reason must unify intuitional as well as nonintuitional representations and lower-level principles, this, in turn, according to Kant, becomes the idea of "the absolute unity of the thinking subject" (A 335/B 392), which itself undergoes no change. 22 Second, there is the idea of freedom, which is engendered by universalizing the hypothetical judgment form: In hypothetical reasoning, the search for completeness and comprehensiveness in the series of antecedents of a consequent yields the concept of the original antecedent without antecedents the groundless ground. Because it, too, must unify intuitional as well as nonintuitional representations, it, in turn, yields the idea of freedom as the first or uncaused cause of everything, the "absolute totality of the series of conditions for any given appearance" (A 340/B 398). Of course a judgment characterizing a groundless ground or first cause could also be rendered as a categorical indicative that predicates the consequent as a property of the antecedent qua subject that cannot be predicated of any further subject. A judgment ascribing an action to a free agent would, for example, satisfy this criterion. Finally, there is the idea of God, which is engendered by universalizing the disjunctive judgment form: Here the search for completeness and comprehensiveness in the set of disjuncts that jointly exhaust the scope of a concept (A 73/B 99) yields the concept of the aggregate of all disjuncts of the most complete concept; and this becomes the idea of God as the totality of all parts of the system, the "being of all beings" (A 336/B 393). In the Dialectic Kant tries to show how all of these ideas of reason naturally develop as higher-level universal principles from the conceptual presuppositions or

11 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 11 Grund of objective empirical knowledge, namely the logically necessary functions of thought. He characterizes these ideas, and the reasoning by which we arrive at them, in the same indicative mood as he did the concepts of the understanding and the synthetic process of judgment by which we unify and objectify our experience. Kant argues that, being committed to the objectivity of our empirical experience, we then must be committed to the regulative authority of the abstract theories and universal principles it engenders. Since they transcend the empirically verifiable, we cannot experientially confirm their truth. But since they naturally arise out of it, we cannot easily reject them either. B. Vernunftschlüsse 23 Kant's account of the way in which ideas of reason are engendered from objective knowledge is based on his conception of cognitive functions as fundamentally spontaneous i.e. active rather than reactive and synthetic that is, unifying rather than particularizing. We saw in Section I.A that concepts collect representations, and in Section I.B that relational judgments collect concepts. Similarly, syllogisms, or inferences of reason Vernunftschlüsse collect relational judgments (A 301/B 358). Therefore inferences of reason indirectly collect representations and concepts. 24 Whereas the understanding collects intuitional representations under lawlike concepts, reason collects what we've conceptualized under yet more abstract and universal explanatory principles that organize and unify them in relation to each other (A 302/B 359). Kant thinks we are so constituted cognitively as to strive naturally to reduce, simplify, and extend the explanatory scope of theoretical principles to cover the greatest variety of intuitional and nonintuitional representations. Reason embeds the particulars of experience in universal judgments that define the broadest possible theoretical framework because to universalize over the particulars of experience is a natural and necessary expression of the self's striving for rational coherence. 25 According to Kant, the forms a Vernunftschluß can take depend on the logical form of judgment employed. Again the categorical and hypothetical forms are most important for our purposes, and the categorical form is the foundation from which the others are constructed:

12 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 12 categorical (indicative): hypothetical (indicative): Major Premise: All A are B. If D is E then F is G. Minor Premise: All/Some C are A. D is E. Conclusion: All/Some C are B. F is G. In each case the major premise is a given judgment stating a universal rule that ascribes a predicate to all subjects of a certain kind (A 322/ B 379). The minor premise is a judgment that subsumes a second subject, or condition, under the concept of the first. And the conclusion yields a further judgment by applying the universal rule of the major premise to the subsumed condition of the minor premise. A condition, for Kant, is a certain kind of state of affairs. In a categorical indicative judgment that functions as a premise in a categorical Vernunftschluß, it is the referent of the subject of the antecedent in the major premise (and, of course, of the subject of the minor premise). 26 Thus a condition functions as does the premise whose subject refers to it, as an antecedent from which some consequent or conclusion can be inferred (this is why Kant sometimes uses the terms condition and premise interchangeably). The conclusion then describes the conditioned (A 330/B A331/B 387), and the major premise conditions the conclusion: that is, it explains the condition or subject described in the conclusion by subsuming it under a general rule. Reason seeks to subsume that kind of subject under more and more abstract and universal kinds in a series of increasingly general judgments. Take the categorical indicativevernunftschluß, (1) Major Premise: All humans are mortal. Minor Premise: Caius is human. Conclusion: Caius is mortal. The major premise of (1) may be in turn the conclusion of even more general and abstract ones, such as (2) Major Premise: All sentient creatures are mortal. Minor Premise: All humans are sentient creatures. Conclusion: All humans are mortal.

13 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 13 And the minor premise of (1) also may be conditioned by prior Vernunftschlüsse, such as (3) Major Premise: All featherless bipeds are human. Minor Premise: Caius is a featherless biped. Conclusion: Caius is human. In both cases reason seeks more general and abstract principles under which a judgment can be subsumed, and from which it can be derived. For any Vernunftschluß, both of its premises can be regarded as conditioned by the more general Vernunftschluß from which they are derived as conclusions. The principle of reason in general, according to Kant, is "to find for the conditioned knowledge of the understanding the unconditioned whereby its unity is completed" (A 307/B 364). This then becomes a regulative principle of pure reason on the presupposition that "if the conditioned is given, the whole series of conditions subordinated to one another, which itself is therefore unconditioned is also given..." A regulative principle is one that guides and directs our innate patterns of reasoning in a way that enables us to extend it past the empirical limits of experience (A 509/B 537). It contrasts with a constitutive principle that defines and determines objectively the existence of some object or state of affairs. The regulative principle of pure reason, then, leads us to seek that most abstract, universal and all-inclusive first principle or Grund from which everything else can be deduced. 27 Thus in order to generalize over such principles to increasing degrees of abstraction, Kant argues, we must assume a totality of such conditions (or premises) for any given conditioned (or subject to which those predicates are ascribed in the conclusion). The complete series of conditions contained in prior universal judgments that determine a conclusion about some object or state of affairs is what Kant calls the unconditioned (A 322/B 379). The unconditioned, then, is the idea of a first and most abstract, universal idea or descriptive principle that functions as a premise subsuming all lower-level descriptive principles or premises under itself. This idea of the unconditioned leads us to try to generate a series of Vernunftschlüsse whose major premises increase in generality and comprehensiveness relative to the particular facts

14 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 14 (or "empirical conditions") with which it begins what Kant describes as the ascending or regressive series (A 331/B 388). The transcendental ideas of God, freedom and immortality are unconditioned in that they express the most abstract and universal principles under which all lower-level disjunctive, hypothetical and categorical Vernunftschlüsse respectively must finally be subsumed (A 336/B A 337/B 395). According to Kant, we know that these are the most comprehensive and universal principles there are because, as we have already seen above, they are derived by universalizing the forms of principles in which reasoning itself occurs. Beyond these most fundamental explanatory principles, Kant thinks, there are no further principles that might subsume them. Just as experience defines the limits of understanding, the ideas of God, freedom and immortality define the limits of reason. C. Hypothesis Construction According to Kant, we embark on the ascending series of Vernunftschlüsse in our search for eventual theoretical completeness by formulating and testing general hypotheses that are intended to explain an increasing variety of particular events. This process of theory-building, the prototype of Hempel's covering-law theory of scientific explanation, 28 Kant describes as the hypothetical employment of reason: If reason is a faculty of deducing the particular from the universal, then either the universal is already certain in itself and given, and so requires only judgment for subsumption, and the particular is thereby necessarily determined; or else the universal is given only problematically, and is a mere idea. Here the particular is certain, but the universality of the rule from which it follows is still a problem. Then more particular instances, each of which are certain, try on the rule for size to see whether they follow from it. In this case, if it appears that all particular instances assigned do follow from it, then we conclude to the universality of the rule, and thence to all instances, even those not themselves given (A 646/B 674). The procedure is clear. We begin with a universalization we rationally suppose to be true, and a firmly established particular case we rationally suppose might instantiate it. We scrutinize several relevantly similar particular cases in order to ascertain whether they do, indeed, instantiate the universalization, such that the formulation of the universalization allows the derivation of the particular instances from it: Does

15 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 15 universalizing over the particular instances yield the universal from which they are supposed to be derived? Does the resulting rule apply not only to these cases, but also to all relevantly similar ones? If the relevant instances, and other citable ones, can be derived from the universalization, we are then justified in regarding it as a valid universal principle that will predict and subsume future instances of that kind. 29 The example Kant offers combines the ideas of God, freedom, and immortality in the idea of rational personhood as a substance with causal power. This is a particularly apt example in light of Kant's project of establishing metaethical foundations in the first Critique for the substantive moral theory he first invokes to illustrate moral reasoning in the Groundwork. There he argues that "because moral laws should be valid for every rational being as such, to derive them from the universal concept of a rational being in general is thereby to explicate all moral philosophy, which needs anthropology for its application to human beings, first independently from this as pure philosophy, i.e. entirely as metaphysics (which can very well be done in this kind of wholly abstract knowledge)" (Ak. 412). The concept of a rational being in general is thus both the highest-level idea of reason that unifies the ideas of God, freedom and immortality; and also the most fundamental concept of morality. Beginning with various established mental dispositions "sensation, consciousness, memory, wit, power of discrimination, inclination (Lust), desire, etc." (A 649/B 677) Kant directs us to employ the "logical maxim through which we reduce, so far as possible, this seeming diversity, so that through comparison one might discover hidden identity." By sorting them into nonredundant groups and universalizing over them we collect them under higher-level principles such as imagination plus consciousness; then under the more general headings of understanding and reason; then under the yet more general explanatory principle of a fundamental power, i.e. a substance with causality, which each such disposition instantiates. Notice that this is one example of the reduction of a hypothetical judgment to a categorical one, i.e. through the ascription of causal properties to substances. But this is a very particular kind of causal substance, namely one that has mental powers with causal efficacy. Finally, Kant says, we may subsume all such causally powerful substances under the principle of an absolutely fundamental power that underlies all relative ones (A 649/B 677). But he cautions us, "This unity of reason is merely hypothetical. It is not claimed that such 30 must in fact be encountered, but that we seek it for the benefit of

16 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 16 reason, that is, of establishing certain principles for the many rules which experience may offer us" (A 649/B A 650/B 678; see also A 682/B 710). The concept of the soul as a self-identical and unchanging entity with the causal powers of understanding and reason can be invoked to explain the diverse manifestations of consciousness. And the concept of God can be invoked to explain the existence of such causally powerful substances. But these are only concepts (or ideas), not empirical experiences. Therefore they are not themselves susceptible to empirical confirmation. They are merely regulative ideas of reason that unify the diversity of our particular experiences. On the one hand, this employment of reason itself remains hypothetical because the ideas of God, freedom and immortality are merely hypotheses that explain our experience rather than statements of fact about our experience. As Kant later remarks about the idea of immortality, "one posits (sich setzen) an idea merely as the one and only point of view from which one can extend that unity which is so essential to reason and so beneficial to the understanding" (A 681/B 709; italics added). To say, however, that ideas of reason are regulative hypotheses is not thereby to underestimate their foundational necessity in human thought. Kant makes it quite clear that the validity of any such regulative hypothesis turns on its ability to unify our experience, our thought, and finally our selves in accordance with the demands of logical necessity. 31 So to the formula for Kant's account of objectivity earlier adduced conceptual a priority, logical necessity, and universality of judgment, reason adds something more, namely theoretical coherence. A higher-level theoretical principle of reason is objectively valid if it subsumes its lower-level principles, concepts, and representations, both intuitional and nonintuitional, under it, such that it allows the systematic inference of those lowerlevel principles, concepts, and representations as logically necessary syllogistic conclusions. Only then can the self be fully unified and the rules of understanding be true. III. Action In this section I apply the conclusions of the preceding account of Kant's models of understanding and reason to the special case of action, following Kant's claim in the Preface to the Groundwork that the unity of practical with speculative reason simultaneously in a common principle must be able to be delineated, since in the end there can be only one and the

17 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 17 same reason, which must be differentiated solely in its application (Ak. 391; italics added). A. Maxims Earlier, in Section I.C, we saw that intuitional representations are synthesized by the categories of the understanding first and foremost into categorical indicatives that claim a certain degree of objectivity in virtue of their form. We also saw that these are then further synthesized into hypothetical indicatives, that is, descriptive causal judgments that are, from the perspective of one's own experience, even more objective. The objectivity of this causal relation holds as much for human actions and consequences as it does for other causally linked events. Action and passion, according to Kant, are pure derivative concepts, or predicables of the pure understanding, derived from the category of cause and effect (A 82/B 108). Since action and passion are transcendental concepts, they, too, synthesize intuitional representations into objects and events. 32 This means that as agents and patients of action, we experience ourselves as genuine empirical causes and effects, and our actions as causally effective events in the world. To me, the causal link between my action and its consequences is as objective and lawlike as any other causal regularity I perceive. The descriptions by which we encode our actions conceptually are no different in form than those by which we encode other causally linked events. They are reducible to categorical indicatives that ascribe causal properties, namely actions, to agents. 33 The "accordion effect" 34 of action-descriptions makes it possible to ascribe a range of such properties, depending on the causal scope of the action the description is intended to capture. So, for example, "I (will) answer the telephone" captures a more restricted causal scope than "I (will) stop the ringing of the telephone." 35 Each expresses a different intention but both may describe the same physical action. Kant's primary concern is with action-descriptions that capture a more restricted causal scope and so a narrower intention, for two reasons. First, he is concerned primarily with our immediate intentions, regardless of their further actual causal consequences, because our intentions are for him the primary locus of moral value. On Kant's view, the rightness or wrongness of actions are derivative from the goodness or badness of our intentions. 36 And second, he thinks that only the immediate objects of our intentions,

18 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 18 and certain basic actions 37 (i.e. the "exerting of every means so far as they are in our power" (Ak. 394)), are under our direct control (Ak. 401). 38 A maxim is a first-person categorical indicative judgment that ascribes a causal property, namely an act, to the subject. It thus both expresses an intention and describes an action. For this reason it may function as a resolution or as a prediction respectively or both simultaneously. It may also describe a mental or a physical act. Kant derives the term "maxim" from the notion of a maximum as the rational idea of what is "greatest and absolutely complete... in the division and unification of the knowledge of the understanding under one principle" (A 665/B 693). We have already seen in Sections II.B and C that the role of reason is to unify the knowledge of understanding under fewer, increasingly abstract and comprehensive higher-level principles. We have also seen above that Kant includes among the objects of knowledge of the understanding knowledge of our actions and of ourselves as agents. Kant defines maxims of reason as all subjective principles which are derived, not from the constitution of the object but from the [speculative] interest of reason in respect of a certain possible perfection of the knowledge of the object (A 666/B 694). Maxims may include principles of thought (such as "I will gather as much relevant information as possible before drawing any conclusions") as well as of action. What all maxims have in common is that they are guided by reason's interest in theoretical completeness. In the case of action, then, we seek an idea of reason a highest-level comprehensive explanatory principle that enables us to understand all of our intentions and resolutions as theoretically coherent principles of action derivable from it and therefore, as we have seen in Section II.C, as objectively valid in light of it. When Kant moves from a formal analysis of how reason operates in general to the content of a particular idea of reason, he moves from rational procedure in general to its application to a substantive theory. In the Canon of Pure Reason Kant describes the idea of reason that guides the formulation of maxims. It is the idea of a world ruled by moral law a necessary idea of reason (A 812/B 840) that has objective reality (A 808/B 836) "in the concept of which we abstract from all the hindrances to morality (the inclinations)" (A 809/B 837). Kant's idea of a moral world comprises two elements: an entire world as a theoretical entity; and a system of operative principles moral law that is universally binding on it. Since in this world moral law is fully operative in the

19 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 19 behavior of its inhabitants, it explains and describes their behavior. And since it consciously guides their actions as well, it also prescribes it. Finally, since the moral law is authored by those inhabitants themselves, it describes and prescribes action that is rationally self-determining. The concept of rationally self-determining action, uncoerced by empirical antecedents, is an application of the principle of self-caused causation, i.e. of transcendental freedom, to the special case of rational agency. 39 Kant's conception of unconditioned moral freedom, that is, as freedom to act in accordance with moral selfdetermination, is not different or separate from the highest-level unconditioned idea of freedom, but instead an instantiation of it in a particular kind of cause. 40 Between the Resolution of the Third Antinomy and the Groundwork Kant preserves the consistency of his conception of unconditioned moral freedom with his accounts of God, freedom and immortality as furnishing highest-level regulative ideas that govern and unify our patterns of thought. All lower-level principles describing causally connected experience of any kind, whether action, desire, free association, or external events, must terminate in the unconditioned idea of freedom. So the criteria of objectivity remain the same for all of them. The unconditioned speculative idea of freedom as autonomous and operative moral law in turn provides the practical foundation for moral conduct. For from the interest of reason in the idea of a perfect world governed by moral law (which for Kant is also "a mere idea" (A 813/B 841); also see Groundwork, Ak. 407, 409, 412, 433, 434, 436 n., 439), we then derive the subjective principles that actually govern our moral agency: Practical laws, in so far as they become at the same time subjective grounds of actions, that is, subjective principles, are entitled maxims. The judgment of morality, regarding its purity and consequences, happens in accordance with ideas, the adherence to its laws in accordance with maxims (A 812/B 840). So we evaluate moral law as a speculative idea of reason; and we follow moral law by deriving practicable maxims from it. To the extent that moral laws are antecedents of a subject's actions, they are maxims; and the entire course of our lives are necessarily subject to them (A 812/B 840). Maxims of action such as "I (will) answer the telephone" or "I (will) return borrowed books" are lower-level conceptualized intentions, derivable as conclusions from higher-level moral principles, and finally from the highest-level unconditioned idea of a world governed by autonomous moral law, i.e. from the idea of

20 Adrian M. S. Piper: Kant on the Objectivity of the Moral Law (1994) 20 freedom. The relationship between maxims and moral ideas, then, is the relation between particular intentional action-descriptions and the more universal and comprehensive principles that explain them. B. Universalization By now it should be clear how we get from one to the other. To move from practicable maxims to the highest-level theoretical principle of operative, universal moral law from which those maxims are derived, we enact exactly the same procedure we use in any rational inquiry, namely hypothesis-construction of the sort described in Section II.C and exemplified in the idea of a causally powerful substance. In the case of action, we begin with both a prereflective rational idea of moral law (Ak ), and also an established particular intention to act. In light of this prereflective conception, we consider several such relevantly similar intentions. These are ex hypothesi certain, whereas "the universal is admitted as... a mere idea,... [and]... the universality of the rule of which [the intention's maxim] is a consequence is still a problem" (A 646/B 674). 41 So we scrutinize these intentions in order to ascertain whether they do, indeed, instantiate the moral law, such that the formulation of the moral law allows the derivation of the particular intentions from it. Again we deploy the "logical maxim through which to reduce, so far as possible, this seeming diversity, so that through comparison one might discover hidden identity" (A 649/B 677). That is, we ascertain whether universalizing over the maxims yields the rule from which they are to be derived, such that the resulting rule applies not only to these established cases, but to all relevantly similar ones. If the relevant intentions, and other citable ones, can be derived from this formulation of the moral law, we are then justified in regarding it as a universal principle that may predict and subsume future instances of that kind. Kant's remarks about hypothesis-construction in the first Critique provides a more complete account of his universalization procedure for moral maxims than is to be found anywhere in the Groundwork. As we have already seen in Section II.B, universalizing a principle that functions as a major premise in a Vernunftschluß results in a categorical indicative that ascribes a predicate to all subjects of a certain kind. And we have also seen in Section II.C that in the Groundwork, Kant tells us to ascend in the series to the most universal and comprehensive principle of action from which lower-level maxims can be derived,